If it's not asked, it won't tell, but that doesn't stop it from being able to drive. In fact, the opposite seems more likely - if the symbolic reasoning center is permanently pestering another process, that process will be hampered. Consiousness can be seen as an artifact of sentience, not necessarily it's raison d'etre. Virtually nobody can visualize a fully working television with all the necessary components performing the requried tasks. In order to function, a television needs a far richer internal structure than most people are capable of holding in their IR worlds.
Conscious thought does seems to be necessary for deductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning is a useful tool, but one which often blinds people to their true abilities, it is seldom the source of insight. A recent article in New Scientist talked about experiments which showed that people can perform much better on some problems when they don't try to think about them. The researchers seemed surprised by this. However, I think it's a crucial difference between hyper productive programmers and average programmers. The mappers let their minds get on with it, and don't cripple themselves by constantly trying to fit their thoughts into consiousness.