I don't know how much detail they have but yes, insurers in the US do know if you've received a ticket for a moving violation (parking violations are irrelevant).

Many of them use solutions like LexisNexis Risk Solutions (which is like a 3rd party API that can return this data). How LNRS gets the data, I'm not sure.

For example, insurers also get data for stolen vehicles since it affects claims. I know this because in a previous (local government) job, I literally sat on calls about building an integration where we sent license plates of stolen cars (officially reported stolen to the police), if we wrote parking tickets for those cars, since we (another local gov agency) spotted the stolen car.

To me, even though I have strong feelings against privacy and surveillance, this felt like a totally pragmatic (and laser focused, it only affect cars that were currently designated stolen) use of the data.

Worked in NYS auto insurance. The government provided us an APi which we could use to pull driver records. While we could pull anyone that we want via the api, we get audited and must show reason for the pulls (such as a newly insured driver or renewal etc).

I assume other states are similar

Are you kidding? Absolutely. For moving violations you can look forward to the ticket itself plus increased insurance premiums.

I'm not an expert and I'm not one to get many tickets however my understanding is that they only look up individuals during renewal time or if you change policy or company.

If you got a speeding ticket on week 10 of the year there is unlikely to be any increase on your insurance on week 35.

Like I said this was my perhaps incorrect understanding of how it works here in Canada.

This is my understanding as well but with net technology perhaps they are checking more often now.

This is not true in my experience in the US (thanks sneakily-placed rapidly-changing speed limit signs enforced against out-of-state plates in Utah!)