It's bad for the transmission itself. Normally when you shift from 1 to 2, you're disengaging one gear then engaging another gear. Reverse is not like that at all. Reverse means one gear is engaged, then the reversing gear is engaged in addition to that. Ideally you are supposed to do this when the gear speeds are synchronized, and the gears are synchronized when the car is stopped. Switching between forward and reverse while the car is rolling is equivalent to driving a manual and changing gears without using a clutch and without synchronizing the speeds. *grind*
In an automatic, a few things can happen. One is that the car makes a loud BANG noise when it changes directions. That's the sound of your transmission expressing how much it dislikes you. Another possibility is that it simply grinds away the clutches inside the transmission and you don't realize it's damaging it. Another possibility is that the electronically controlled transmission will not attempt to change direction until the speed is within an acceptable speed range.
In every manual transmission I've driven, one cannot change direction while it's rolling. It just doesn't allow the stick to move into any of the forward gears while it's rolling backward. When mythbusters tried doing it the other way around, forward to reverse, the same thing happened to their manual. It'll make a bunch of grinding noise but it will not change no matter how hard you want it to.
1) An automatic uses a planetary system, not a traditional twin shaft arrangement. This means that reverse in an automatic is achieved in a completely different manner from what you have described. It will absolutely
not "grind away the clutches" (for one, clutches don't "grind", and for another the increased wear on the clutch
packs is relatively slight unless if you're only moving at 1-2 mph). In most modern electronically-controlled automatics, the transmission electronics won't even allow the shift until it's safe for the mechanical bits anyway. (
How a planetary gearset achieves reverse.)
2) You can easily shift
out of reverse while in motion, it's shifting
into reverse that's problematic because reverse is not synchronized. Shifting
out of a non-synchronized gear is just as easy as shifting out of a synchronized gear. Since the forward gears
are synchronized (in modern manuals), you
can shift into 1st while the car is moving backwards. However, this is harder on the 1st-gear synchro (which is weaker than the other synchros in most transmissions remember) and it's difficult at speeds above say 1-2 mph.
ZV