But you also have a good chance to get through the failure with one working engine. A two engine plane with one working engine climbs slowly, and a one engine plane with zero working engines doesn't climb at all.
The problem is that fully loaded, many piston twin planes do not climb at all or can only descend slowly on one engine.
There is a saying about light piston twins…. The other engine will take you all the way to the scene of the crash. If you are willing to fly your light piston twin half full, you have great safety margins, but then you are paying twice as much to move less payload than a comparable single engine aircraft.
I should say that some piston twins are much better than others in this regard, but for many it seems the extra engine mainly hauls the weight of the extra fuel and airframe you had to add to carry it. Asymmetrical thrust adds a lot of drag.
Moving to turbocharged engines or turbines tends to improve things a lot, but even some big twins can’t climb with one engine. (C130 in a many configurations, for example)
I’m pretty sure modern designs are much better as a rule. Composite construction and power to weight ratios of modern power plants have pushed the numbers safely to the left of the tipping point.
This is a lot harder to achieve using 1930s technology engines and construction as found in many light aircraft built up into the 1980s. There’s only so much you can get out of an air cooled, low RPM carburated gasoline engine,and complex shapes in metal construction cost big in labor and weight.
