OPINION
Pro Tempore. *
¶ 1 This appeal stems from three consolidated actions. Barbara Collette and Scott MacFarland, wife and husband, and Holly L. Scofield (“appellants”) appeal from the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to defendants-appellees Tolleson Unified School District No. 214, Stephen Knight, and Kino Flores (collectively “the District”). 1 For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
¶ 2 Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
Orme Sch. v. Reeves,
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
¶ 3 Appellants were injured in an automobile accident on November 19, 1998, at approximately 12:10 p.m., when the car Scofield was driving was struck by a car operated by Zachary Thomason, a student at Westview High School. Four other students were passengers in Thomason’s car. The students were returning to school from Desert Sky Mall, about five miles away, where they had driven during their school lunch break. The scheduled lunch period for these students began at 11:20 a.m. and ended fifty minutes later at 12:10 p.m.
¶4 Westview had a modified closed-campus policy. That is, students were not to leave campus during the day without checking out and, in order to check out, needed specific parental permission. Students who violated the policy were subject to disciplinary action. Freshmen were not permitted to leave during school hours, including lunch; sophomores, juniors, and seniors with at least a 3.0 grade point average and their parents’ permission were permitted to leave campus at lunch. An identification card or “lunch pass” was required to be presented by the students upon leaving and re-entering campus. The policy was. intended to reward *362 students for academic achievement and good behavior.
¶5 Thomason did not have a lunch pass and neither did two other members of the group. After the students decided to drive to the mall for lunch, Thomason went to get his car, which was parked off campus. He proceeded to a campus entrance where a security guard was stationed. When the guard asked Thomason for his pass, he admitted he did not have one. As Thomason continued to walk on, the guard told him he could not leave. Thomason told the guard he needed some books from his car for his next class. The guard again told him he could not leave campus, and Thomason replied, “Well, I need the books, so, basically, I’m going off.” The guard made no further attempt to stop Thomason, but did admonish him to come back quickly. The other members of the group left campus through an unguarded gate and joined Thomason, who drove to the mall.
¶ 6 The students ate lunch at the mall food court and then began the trip back to campus. The students gave conflicting testimony as to whether they were in a hurry to get back to class on time. Because we must view the record most favorably to appellants, we accept as true that Thomason was in a hurry. The accident happened while Thomason was driving westbound on Thomas Road when he pulled into the eastbound lane to pass other westbound vehicles. As he attempted to return to his lane of travel, he lost control of his vehicle, which then collided with Sco-field’s eastbound car. The investigating officer estimated Thomason’s speed prior to impact was approximately seventy-two miles per hour.
¶ 7 The District sought summary judgment, alleging a lack of duty to appellants, and the trial court agreed. Appellants timely appealed.
DISCUSSION
¶ 8 Appellants contend the trial court erred by granting summary judgment, and raise two arguments on appeal. First, they claim that the District, by virtue of its modified closed-campus policy, had a duty to protect the general public from the negligent driving of students who left campus. Second, they argue that the District created an unreasonable risk of harm to the motoring public by placing rigid time constraints on student lunch breaks. We first consider the duty issue.
Determining the Existence of a Duty
¶ 9 A negligence action may not be maintained in the absence of a duty recognized by law, and the existence of a duty is a question of law for the court.
Markowitz v. Arizona Parks Bd.,
¶ 10 The relationship between individuals that results in a legal obligation is usually a direct one between the plaintiff and defendant.
Id.
In this case, appellants do not contend that they had any direct relationship with the District. They maintain, however, that the parties need not be connected or know each other for a duty to arise, citing
Rudolph v. Arizona B.A.S.S. Federation,
¶ 11 This argument misconstrues
Rudolph.
Admittedly, there is no requirement that a foreseeable plaintiff be personally known to the defendant for a duty to exist.
Id.
at 624,
¶ 12 In this case, the District did not directly injure appellants; they were injured by Thomason, one of the District’s students. We therefore must determine whether to recognize a legal relationship between appellants and the District that gives rise to a duty. Appellants contend that the District’s special relationship with Thomason imposed a duty upon the District to control Thoma-son’s conduct so as to prevent injury to them under the circumstances of this case.
¶ 13 There is no common law duty to control the conduct of a third person so as to prevent harm from befalling another. Restatement (Second) of Torts (“Restatement”) § 314 (1965);
Davis v. Mangelsdorf,
¶ 14 Section 315 of the Restatement provides an exception to the general rule of non-liability when “a special relation exists between the actor and the third person which imposes a duty upon the actor to control the third person’s conduct.” Restatement § 315 (1965);
Cooke v. Berlin,
¶ 15 Appellants do not argue that they had a special relationship with the District that gave them a right to the District’s protection. Rather, their claim is predicated upon section 315(a) of the Restatement — the special relationship between the District and its students. Appellants ask us to find that relationship as one which imposed a duty upon the District to control Thomason and prevent him from harming them. 2 Appellants argue, and we agree, that a school district has a statutory and common law duty to its students. 3 While the standard of care that must be met to fulfill that duty has been the subject of several Arizona cases, no reported Arizona case has yet considered the question raised here.
¶ 16 The only conduct of the District at issue here is the alleged negligent enforcement of its modified closed-campus policy. Nothing happened to Thomason while at school that affected his ability to drive a car. Nor was Thomason’s driving part of any school activity.
Cf. Bishop v. State Dep’t of Corrections,
¶ 17 Plainly, the District had no power to control Thomason’s actual operation of his vehicle. Appellants are really arguing that the District’s duty to supervise its students *364 gave rise to a duty to appellants to keep Thomason from driving his car at the particular time this accident happened. We do not believe reasonable persons would agree that such a duty exists, and decline to impose such a duty in this case for both practical and policy reasons.
¶ 18 As a practical matter, we see no benefit in imposing a duty upon a school district concerning the conduct of students over which it has no control. The District has no power or authority to decide which students are authorized to operate motor vehicles on public highways. Nor does it have the power to prevent, revoke, or restrict a student’s off-campus driving privileges, or even to prevent a student from choosing to drive without a license. The most the District can do is to impose discipline upon a student for the violation of school rules involving motor vehicles in and around campus or prohibit a student from driving a motor vehicle onto the school campus.
¶ 19 The ability to impose discipline after the fact is significantly different from the power to control a student’s conduct before the fact.
4
Once a student removes himself from school grounds, with or without permission, his decision to drive is outside the supervisory power of school officials. This court has recognized, in another context involving the control of the conduct of a minor, the futility of imposing a duty when there is no concomitant power to discharge it.
Pfaff By and Through Stalcup v. Ilstrup,
¶ 20 Moreover, appellants’ argument proposes an unreasonable duty on schools with potentially broad ramifications. The duty of control that appellants seek to impose here— to prevent student driving at any time that a student is supposed to be in school — could, if recognized, encompass an even broader range of potential student conduct. School districts might thereby be called upon to defend their student supervision policies and actions in a variety of other contexts and settings, and all other aspects of a school’s schedule could be subject to challenge. We do not believe a school district should be under a duty to anticipate and protect against such eventualities.
¶21 The Arizona cases relied upon by appellants that address the liability of schools and school districts are inapposite because they are based upon the undisputed duty of care or supervision owed to a student. This court has twice held, in automobile accident eases, that a school or school district does not, as a matter of law, breach the duty of student supervision by failing to have, or to enforce, a closed campus policy.
Rogers By and Through Standley v. Retrum,
¶ 22 Appellants’ analogy to Rudolph is also misplaced. In that case, the organizer of a fishing tournament, as a user of the lake, was held to have a duty to design the tournament and make rules for the conduct of its members so as to avoid increasing the risk of harm to all other users of the lake. Here, the District was not a user of the highway. Thomason was not involved in any school activity in which the District made rules for use of the public highway which would affect other motorists such as appellants. Thoma-son’s driving was governed by the general laws regulating the operation of a motor vehicle, which were in turn unaffected by any school rule.
¶23 Reported cases from other jurisdictions that have considered similar arguments for the imposition of a duty upon a school district for the negligence of a student driver have declined to find such a duty. In the first of these,
Thompson v. Ange,
83 A.D.2d
*365
193,
¶24 The Indiana Court of Appeals followed
Ange
in
Wickey v. Sparks,
¶25 Finding no duty to the motorist injured by the student’s driving, the Indiana court balanced three factors: the relationship of the parties, the reasonable foreseeability of harm, and public policy. Id. at 266-68. First, the court found no legal relationship between school authorities and the general public. Id. at 266. Second, there was no evidence that a student driving during school hours created the foreseeability of increased harm to the public any more than if that student, or any other licensed driver for that matter, had been driving on the public highway at any other time for any other reason. Id. at 267. Finally, as a matter of public policy, the court did not believe that schools should be insurers of their students’ conduct or be liable for students’ negligent acts away from school. Id.
¶ 26 The California Supreme Court reached a similar result in
Hoff v. Vacaville Unified School District,
¶ 27 The California Supreme Court rejected the existence of such a broad duty, finding that the district’s duty to supervise students did not run to the off-campus, non-student, pedestrian.
Id.
¶ 28 The most recent court to consider this issue was
Gylten v. Swalboski,
¶ 29 In each of these four cases, the nexus between student driving and a school activity or educational function was even stronger than it is in this case. The no-duty decisions of these courts reflect the unwillingness as a matter of policy to extend a school district’s responsibility to persons in the position of appellants. We agree with these decisions for the reasons discussed above, and we also find, as in
Ange,
that imposing a duty here would extend the legal consequences “beyond a controllable degree.”
¶ 30 We also base our decision upon another requirement for the imposition of a duty that we find lacking here and that is a finding that Thomason posed an “unreasonable” risk of harm.
See Alhambra Sch. Dist. v. Superior Court (Nichols),
Assumption of Duty
¶31 Appellants also argue that the District’s modified closed-campus policy was a duty assumed by the District for appellants’ protection as described in Restatement § 324A (1965), which provides:
One who undertakes, gratuitously or for consideration, to render services to another which he should recognize as necessary for the protection of a third person or his things, is subject to liability to the third person for physical harm resulting from his failure to exercise reasonable care to protect his undertaking, if
(a) his failure to exercise reasonable care increases the risk of such harm, or
(b) he has undertaken to perform a duty owed by the other to the third person, or
(c) the harm is suffered because of reliance of the other or third person upon the undertaking.
Appellants contend that the District “recog-. nized that enforcement of its modified and supervised closed-campus policy was necessary for the protection of students and other motorists.”
7
However, as discussed previ
*367
ously, the District’s “recognition” that enforcement of its student supervision policies also acted to protect the public is not, by itself, enough to impose a
duty
to act for the protection of the public.
Markowitz,
¶32 In any case, § 324A is inapplicable here. This section operates to create a duty from a voluntary undertaking by one who otherwise has no duty to act.
See Barnum v. Rural Fire Prot. Co.,
¶33 In addition, because appellants do not argue that subsections (b) or (c) of § 324A apply in this case, a duty under § 324A could be found only if the District’s failure to exercise reasonable care to keep students confined to campus at specific times increased the risk of harm from their conduct. Appellants’ argument is tantamount to asking us to find that a high school student, when not at school and under the school’s supervision, poses an increased risk of harm to the community as a matter of law. We see no basis for such a determination. High school students are not persons of “dangerous propensities” who are “likely to cause bodily harm” if not controlled. There is no evidence that students who sometimes break attendance rules are a danger to the public. Students are not the prisoners of the school; they are members of the community who regularly come and go among us in the activities of daily life.
¶ 34 Moreover, no necessary connection has been established here between a student who leaves campus in violation of the rules and negligent driving. No evidence was presented that a student who leaves with permission is less likely to be involved in an automobile accident than one who does not. Many students drive to and from school, to and from jobs, for errands, and for pleasure. In so doing, they expose themselves and others to the risk of motor vehicle accidents, and it cannot be said as a matter of law that student driving is qualitatively more risky during a daytime school lunch break than at any other time a student driver might be on the road. We are unwilling to hold that students outside the reach of school supervision pose an increased risk of harm to the general public.
“Rush Hour” Mentality
¶ 35 Appellants contend that the District’s “rigid time limit” for lunch created a “rush-hour” mentality for student drivers. They claim that the District should have known that students were regularly driving to Desert Sky Mall for lunch and that not enough time was allocated for them to make such a trip safely. They further contend that the time schedule issue makes this case similar to Bishop and Rudolph.
¶ 36 Again, we disagree. The time schedules in both
Bishop
and
Rudolph
were relevant to whether a duty had been breached, not whether one existed. Because we hold that the District had no duty to appellants, the District cannot be liable to them based upon student lunch-hour time schedules, even if such schedules might be “negligently” imposed.
Markowitz,
No Breach of Duty
¶ 37 Even if this court accepted appellants’ argument that the District owed them a duty, summary judgment would nonetheless be appropriate. The evidence viewed most favorably to appellants fails to establish a breach of duty. Thomason’s sneaking off campus did not increase the ordinary risk of vehicular harm that appellants would have faced if Thomason left campus with permission. Imposing a time limit on lunch, as done by virtually all schools and most employers, did not create an unreasonable risk of harm.
8
This case is indistinguishable from
Rogers
and
Tollenaar.
Here, as in those
*368
cases, appellants were exposed only to the ordinary risks of vehicular collision that “members of our mobile society face ... whenever they are in cars.”
Rogers,
CONCLUSION
¶ 38 The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
Notes
The Honorable Douglas L. Rayes, Judge Pro 1 Tem-pore of the Court of Appeals, Division One, has been authorized to participate in this appeal by order of the Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court pursuant to Arizona Constitution, Article 6, Section 31 and A.R.S. §§ 12-145 through 12-147 (1992 and Supp.2001).
. Stephen Knight was the principal of Westview High School, a school within the District, and Kino Flores was the superintendent of the District.
. Appellants cite
Grimm v. Arizona Board of Pardons & Paroles,
. Arizona Revised Statutes ("A.R.S.") § 15-341(A)(13), (14), and (17) (Supp.2001) requires the governing board of the school district to hold students to strict account for disorderly conduct on school property; discipline students for disorderly conduct on the way to and from school; and provide for adequate supervision over pupils in instructional and noninstructional activities. The duty of ordinary care owed by a school district and teacher to students while under their charge is recognized in
Chavez v. Tolleson Elementary,
. For example, school officials are not authorized to physically restrain a high school student to prevent that student from leaving campus. A.R.S. § 15—843(b)(3) (Supp.2001) (physical force by certificated or classified school personnel is permitted only in self-defense, defense of others, and defense of property).
. One justice specially concurred in the result to make clear that he would have ended the court's analysis with the determination that the school district’s duty could not exceed a parent’s duty. He would not have taken the additional step of establishing an analogy to the parent-child relationship because doing so might impose unwarranted liability in cases where district employees knew or should have known of a child’s tendencies to behavior that might injure a non-student in these same circumstances. Id. For the same reasons of caution, we also decline to establish that analogy as law in this case.
. The extent of the potential burden which appellants seek to place upon the District is best illustrated by their own expert’s view of the undertaking necessary for the District to meet the standard of care before it could set a simple lunch break policy: "undertake a comprehensive study of traffic conditions near and surrounding the campus to ascertain the impact of their modified closed campus policy on nearby traffic volumes and roadway capacities [and] ... evaluate and study distances of actual student destinations during the lunch period.”
. Although we will accept for purposes of argument that the District did recognize this, we note that the record does not support so broad a construction. Appellants cite the deposition testimony of a representative of the District to support their argument that the District knew its policy was intended to protect the public. The excerpt quotes an assistant principal to the effect that the school practices a "good neighbor policy” towards the neighboring community whereby it attempts to provide protection to the general public against certain risks. In the excerpt quoted by appellants, the assistant principal was addressing the school’s concern for student conduct that might not be that of a "good neighbor;” she was not discussing student driving. Indeed, the assistant principal clearly recognized the impossibility of the District controlling off-campus conduct and repeatedly emphasized that the Dis *367 trict's policy was to discipline only that conduct which affected the entire student body.
. As discussed above in note 6, the burden appellants would have us impose on the District in determining the length of the lunch break is not reasonable.