I think people should basically use car seats and use them basically correctly; they have saved lives.
Myopic focus on the tiniest minutiae of car seat usage is weird and inconsistent because we are talking about the most minuscule risks which are being massively outweighed by other things.
There’s all the additional risk that is incurred when people choose to live in locations that require shitloads of driving (esp along dangerous, bendy rural roads), enroll their kids in extra curriculars that will require lots of driving (including at night when everyone’s tired), choose schools which are a distance away. All these things substantially increase the odds your child will die in a car accident, yet they never get commented on from a safety point of view.
I don’t mean that we necessarily “should” be judging or criticizing these things, either, just that the excessive focus among some parents on every last tiny detail of “basically perfectly fine car seats” while ignoring everything else comes across as excessive.
Don’t even get me started on the driving/sleep deprivation nexus. Every parent I know who lives in a car dependent location has wound up driving cars while significantly sleep deprived at times, with their child in the back. In terms of impact on driver safety, this is apparently similar to driving after having several drinks. Technically, we could avoid this by choosing to live on a bus route/within calling distance of a taxi, to substitute on days when our driving ability is poor due to having been woken up several times by the toddler last night. Nobody discusses this, though. We just micro-fuss about extremely minor car seat details.
The broader point I am making here is that nobody is perfect from a safety perspective, and some sense of balance is needed here. I don’t think the OP needs to replace her (no doubt properly made and properly installed) car seat because a bird hit the car.