In this study, the transmission capacity of VANETs in a highway scenario is analysed on the basis of a 1D line model and the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance(CSMA/CA) protocol. We describe the CSMA/CA protocol used in IEEE802.11 p from the perspective of the geometric relationship amongst simultaneous transmitters. The desired channel and interfering channels are assumed to experience the same amount of path-loss and Rayleigh fading. On the basis of the proposed model, we analyse the attempted transmission probability of each road segment and the maximum intensity of active transmitters, including their theoretical values. Then, we employ the physical model to obtain the outage probability and derive the upper bound of the transmission capacity of a VANET, which is defined as the average spatial density of successful transmissions in the network. Simulation results indicate that the theoretical value offers a good bound on network capacity.