I was unicycling to class this morning and saw this girl with those ugly giant "stylish" sunglasses (no room for a helmet, of course) talking on her phone and holding a starbucks iced something or other. She was approaching what we call the intersection of death (which was recently converted to a roundabout). Of course she was going without hands as she approached, saw that she was going to need to steer and tried to get a hand on the bars but instead macked the roundabout and tumbled over it. Red cross certified back in the day and always carrying first aid in my backpack, I patched up the small cuts she had.
That was one of the cases where the cyclist deserved what she got, but in the case of your friend, that's a truly unfortunate freak accident. Hopefully he'll heal up quickly and get back on the road.