If I understood your description right, you are side by side with a car for a left turn. That has to be a really wide lane for you to be doing that safely. How do you get your legal distance from both cars doing that?

Me personally, I'm part of traffic. I'm the little old Sunday driver or the farm vehicle, but I'm still part of traffic. That means I align myself as if I were in a car, behind the vehicle in front of me and ahead of the vehicle behind me.

Of all the types of "punishment" I've endured from motorists, there has been nothing at a stop light. Sometimes traffic piles up in the other lane to avoid being behind me, and I have a nice laugh when I show that car #3 and back in the other lane would have been better off behind me, but yeah, the only thing that has happened at a stop light was a woman giving me a "You go girl!" when she saw me on a bicycle.

One source to consider on how to handle a left turn would be your state driver's manual (yes they cover bike laws in addition to motorists interacting with a bicycle laws). Contact your DMV or your state Department of Transportation. They may also have a cycling specific manual as well as the driver's manual.