A data packet transmission method and a terminal, the method including determining, by a terminal, a transmission resource utilization threshold, where the transmission resource utilization threshold indicates maximum transmission resource utilization for transmitting a to-be-transmitted data packet by using a transmission resource in a resource pool in a preset time period, and the transmission resource utilization threshold is determined by resource utilization of the transmission resource in the resource pool, selecting, by the terminal, a target transmission resource in a first time period from the resource pool based on the transmission resource utilization threshold, and sending, by the terminal, the to-be-transmitted data packet on the target transmission resource.