CVV misuse

Credit card frauds are rampant these days. Here's a thought on the card verification value or CVV that appears on the credit cards...

Consider the following case:
You go to a petrol bunk and fill petrol in your car. You hand over your credit card. The card is swiped, you sign and zoom off. One month later you see a huge charge against your card and a list of all those transactions that you never made!
The bunk owner was a nasty chap. He made a note of your credit card details. All that he needed to execute an online transaction is the credit card number, expiry date and the CVV or the CVV2 if I should be more precise.

Question: Why should the CVV be printed on the card?

Thought: I see no reason for the CVV to be printed on the card. The banks should be more discreet in distributing the CVV. They do that with the ATM card PINs... why can't the same be done with the CVV? This way we can avoid the card being misused by the corrupt merchants like the one in the case cited above.