Could the noveau driver cause a crash, even though Nvidia driver is active?

I am running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with stock Gnome and Nvidia drivers:

└─( ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:02:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00001184sv000019DAsd00004255bc03sc00i00
vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GK104 [GeForce GTX 770]
driver   : nvidia-driver-390 - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-driver-470-server - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-driver-450-server - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-driver-470 - distro non-free recommended
driver   : nvidia-driver-418-server - distro non-free
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

It would "appear" that the Nvidia driver 470 is the "active" one (is there any other way to confirm this?) and noveau is just installed but not active.

However, recently I'm experiencing UI freezes, and the only way I can get the system working again is via a remote SSH session and restarting LightDM:

sudo systemctl restart lightdm.service

Looking into syslog I saw this immediately before the system froze:

Aug  6 22:53:54 gondor kernel: [12567.767668] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: fifo: SCHED_ERROR 0a [CTXSW_TIMEOUT]
Aug  6 22:53:54 gondor kernel: [12567.767696] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: fifo: runlist 0: scheduled for recovery
Aug  6 22:53:54 gondor kernel: [12567.767715] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: fifo: channel 3: killed
Aug  6 22:53:54 gondor kernel: [12567.767724] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: fifo: engine 7: scheduled for recovery
Aug  6 22:53:54 gondor kernel: [12567.767729] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: fifo: engine 0: scheduled for recovery
Aug  6 22:53:54 gondor kernel: [12567.767746] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: fifo: fault 00 [READ] at 0000004402000000 engine 1b [CE2] client 04
 [GPC0/T1_1] reason 08 [PITCH_MASK_VIOLATION] on channel -1 [0042211000 unknown]

which would indicate that something went wrong with noveau (but why? isn't it NOT supposed to be active?).

Now, the suggestion I got is to blacklist noveau in /etc/modprobe.d, but I fear that if I do that, I may completely bork the system.

So a couple of questions:

1. am I barking up the wrong tree?
2. either way, is it "safe" to blacklist noveau?

Thanks!

1. it turns out that the Noveau driver was indeed the one selected;
2. not sure how that came to pass: I certainly never deactivated the Nvidia driver;
3. the solution was to launch the Additional Drivers application, and select the "recommended" Nvidia driver (477 in my case)

That seems to have solved the issue, no more crashes since.