contango 

The simple part, what penalties there are for breaking the rules on a bike. That depends on where you live, and what national or local laws you broke. In theory in the UK you can be fined for cycling in the dark without lights, cycling on the pavement, or breaking any other rule that applies to vehicles. In practise unless you are seen by a police officer there's little chance of actually being fined and even if you are seen by a police officer if you simply refuse to stop then unless they can catch you or identify you they still can't do much about it.

In terms of how to move across it's hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer to that because so much would depend on the traffic, the junction in question, what lanes are available, your skill and confidence on the bike, and so on. I live in the UK so don't need to flip the left/right thing around. What I do is start checking the traffic behind me well before I need to get into position so that if there's a lot of traffic I can start indicating my intentions good and early and maybe get into position good and early. If there's a right turn lane then you can either take your place in the traffic or look to pass the traffic on either side, depending on what other traffic is about and your skill and confidence doing that sort of thing - when I first started cycling I just took my place in a traffic queue whereas now I'll use any space that's available and safe to move to the front of the queue in traffic jams or at traffic lights.

You can't force cars to slow down any more than you can force cars to let you in if you want to change lane in a car. One thing I have found is that when drivers can clearly see what I want to do they are usually reasonably accommodating. The flip side of that is that when I'm behind the wheel I'll try and accommodate a cyclist if I can see what it is they want to do and find the cyclists that annoy me the most are the ones that leave me guessing what they are likely to do next.

If you just can't get across in time it's not really any different to finding you can't get across a lane in the car - you just go a bit further, turn around and come back. Or, since a bike is small enough to pick it up, you pull off the road and cross at a safe place on foot either pushing or carrying the bike. It's not ideal but not the end of the world if you fall back on doing that. It beats trying to swerve across in front of someone who may or may not have space to slow down for you.