On transversal submanifolds and their measure

We study the class of transversal submanifolds. We characterize their blow-ups at transversal points and prove a negligibility theorem for their ``generalized characteristic set'', with respect to the Carnot-Carathéodory Hausdorff measure. This set is made by all points of non-maximal degree. Observing that C^1 submanifolds in Carnot groups are generically transversal, the previous results prove that the ``intrinsic measure'' of C^1 submanifolds is generically equivalent to their Carnot-Carathéodory Hausdorff measure. As a result, the restriction of this Hausdorff measure to the submanifold can be replaced by a more manageable integral formula, that should be seen as a ``sub-Riemannian mass''. Another consequence of these results is an explicit formula, only depending on the embedding of the submanifold, that computes the Carnot-Carathéodory Hausdorff dimension of C^1 transversal submanifolds.