This paper presents a novel Medium Access Control protocol for inter-vehicular wireless networking using the emerging Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) standards. The main contribution of the paper is the design of a self-configuring TDMA protocol capable of inter-vehicle message delivery with short and deterministic delay bounds. A novel feature of VeSOMAC is its in-band control mechanism for exchanging TDMA slot information during distributed MAC scheduling. It is shown that by avoiding explicit timing information exchange, VeSOMAC can work without intervehicle time synchronization. The in-band control mechanism is also used for fast protocol convergence during initial network setup and topology changes due to vehicle movements. A simulation model has been developed for comparing VeSOMAC?s performance with that of DSRC-recommended 802.11 MAC for traffic safety applications.