In my childhood, my father took us on a summertime drive from Chicago to Michigan’s Harbor Country. As the miles rolled on, we passed steamy steel mills, blaring billboard ads for Stuckey’s pecan rolls, rickety gas stations and crowded truck stops. I still hold the idyllic memory of that family car trip to the beach in Union Pier, near a cottage my aunt once owned.

That’s all changed.

On a recent drive for a weekend jaunt to southwestern Michigan, we encountered billboards hawking personal injury attorneys and cannabis dispensaries. One, after the other, after the other.

The ubiquitous, blaring ads for Sarkisian Sarkisian, Vrdolyak Law Group, Lerner and Rowe, the Allen Law Group. The fervent appeals for PUFF, Mint and King of Budz, promoting the pot dispensaries that are crowding out each other in the lakeside town of New Buffalo. They are clustered just beyond the Indiana-Michigan border. For pot entrepreneurs, it’s a 21st century gold rush.

Crain’s Detroit Business has dubbed New Buffalo “Weed City, USA.”

Between ads for personal injury attorneys and marijuana shops, little else pops up.

I was puzzled by this development. I pondered: What does it mean, and what does it say about our culture? The first thing that edged out of this woodwork is the odd confluence of these pitches.

The cannabis peddlers promise to shake up your world, break down barriers and put a big smile on your face. The personal injury attorneys pledge to bring you good fortune and “justice.”

Is it my imagination or are these trends working at cross-purposes? One, the drugs, can jiggle things and make life less stable and dangerous. The other, personal injury attorneys, hope to bring you relief and riches. One leads to the other’s doorstep.

That’s where things land. First, you buy the marijuana, then party, maybe act recklessly. Then, you get into an accident and call the lawyer, who gets you a fat financial settlement.

Personal injury attorneys, once snidely called “ambulance chasers,” seem to be moving up the food chain in the legal world.

They are surely keeping busy. Nationwide, the number of “personal injury/product liability filings surged 78 percent (up 46,809 cases)” — and “filings in the category of other personal injury/product liability grew by 30,067 (up 71%),” according to data from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Money can cast a wide net. Billboards on the highway to Michigan are just one example of how it is being insinuated into all aspects of our lives. In Chicago, the TV airwaves are packed with commercials from their ilk. Get into a wreck and get a check. Trip on the sidewalk, call us. It’s the American way.

The proliferation of pot stores is the inevitable conclusion to the national push to legalize marijuana. Open up close to where your product is illegal, and the customers will come running.

I was never much of a pot smoker, but friends of my youth spent a lot of time in the clouds. Now, the drug is legal and available to all. It’s the democratization of weed.

All you need is a clear nasal passage to smell the pervasiveness of cannabis on every street corner. We are constantly assaulted by the smell wafting out of car windows.

So, another question: Are dangerous car crashes being perpetuated by cannabis?

“National data on the effects of marijuana use on road safety is spotty, but studies have shown that cannabis can impede a driver’s ability to respond quickly to an obstacle and judge distance accurately,” The New York Times reported earlier this year.

One study found that more than half the people injured or killed in car crashes had one or more drugs, or alcohol, in their bloodstreams.

About 54% of drivers who were injured had either drugs or alcohol in their systems, with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, being dominant, according to the study published in 2022 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Between September 2019 and July 2021, researchers examined blood tests taken at seven Level 1 trauma centers and four medical examiners’ offices in seven cities, including Miami; Charlotte, N.C.; Baltimore; and Sacramento, Calif.

“We also are concerned that nearly 20% of road users tested positive for two or more drugs, including alcohol,” then-acting NHTSA Administrator Ann Carlson told The Associated Press. “The use of multiple substances at once can magnify the impairing effects of each drug.”

Of course, after the accident comes a lawsuit. Mayhem is the stock and trade of this vicious cycle.

Let’s face it. Car trips are not what they used to be.

Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist.