Very interesting movie below, in which a nice application of rheology to safety is demonstrated.
This is actually the application of shear thickening liquids, for which the viscosity increases with increasing shear rate. The famous application is d3o and mainly for sports. The other famous example is the STF for military usage.
Several years back, I was told by a researcher that shear thickening property is not that useful in comparison to shear thinning property. But nowadays it seems not.