CAP,
Having recently had a near miss (according to the other bod - I didn't even see the b^&*er) during an overhead join I'm an even bigger fan of IP joins.
The big advantage is that you can see all the other traffic because you're running in straight for the last couple of miles.
My recent near miss seems to have come because we had both done overhead joins and the continuous turn to crosswind resulted in the other bod being in a blind spot. I thought I'd looked really well but it was dusk and he didn't have any lights (I had Nav and strobes on), my stude was yakking and I didn't hear the other bods R/T calls!
Confessional over.