I know in Europe, people don't let restaurant employees (or bartenders) take their credit / debit cards away from the table. All (most) of the Chip Readers are mobile, so they bring the reader to the table for you and you put in your pin / any tip amount yourself, using the Chip Reader.

I think that if the US moves in the same direction as Europe, we should have the same options / Chip Readers here. Europe has been using Chip Readers (with pins) for much longer than the US and have been fairly successful (from what I hear). It's been at least 6+ years that I know of, since my first visit across the Atlantic, and they were using the mobile chip readers for a while before I traveled there.

There isn't a way for you to set up alerts for PIN transactions? That sounds like a great area of opportunity for your bank. I'd send them a suggestion / complaint about that.