Vehicular communications can be achieved through the infrastructure (Vehicle-to-infrastructure network, V2I), as well as directly through vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) via ad hoc networks. In V2V communications, the routing protocols are designed in order to optimize the dissemination of messages. This paper presents an evaluation of routing protocols such as the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), and Geographic Routing Protocol (GRP), while considering both vehicular safety application requirements and mobility models based on real-world traces of vehicular traffic. The results show that, though proactive routing protocols perform better in this context, the four routing protocols fail to fulfill the safety application requirements on the delay metric even for a reasonable number of vehicles.